The King's Sons (The Herezoth Trilogy) (19 page)

“Yes,”
said Terrance, “about that…. Our new recruit? Rickard Holler?”

Linstrom
nodded his appreciation. “The late Duke of Yangerton’s bastard.”

“Think
he’ll resent the idea of laying waste to his father’s duchy?”

“It’s
not as though the bloke knew his father. Had no attachment to him, Terrance.
He’s more interest in causing trouble for Ingleton than protecting an
inheritance he’ll never see. Hasn’t those ambitions. He’s far from the duke’s
only bastard, anyway, and hardly the oldest, based on his youth. He won’t
complain.”

* * *

For
over an hour Kora knelt in her trance. Kansten, bored stiff, began writing in a
journal, and jolted as her mother stood up; she streaked ink across her page.

“Get
the king,” Kora ordered. “Get him now. With your uncle and Vane, if Vane’s
here. Go.”

Kansten
sprinted to the door. She tugged on it until her mother lifted the sound
barrier, and then she was off down the hall, dodging servants who stared after
her as she ran. She ran all the way to the parlor, praying the king had not
left Oakdowns while Kora had been spying on Evant Linstrom.

He
had not. Kansten found him where she had left him, in conversation with her
Uncle Zac, Thad, Vane, and a slim, stringy-haired, confident-looking woman near
her mother’s age she supposed must be Jane Trand, the sorcery instructor Vane
and the Magic Council had hired for their school. August was there as well,
clinging to her husband’s arm. Kansten’s brothers had shrunk into the corner,
trying to overhear as much as possible, but Kansten ignored them. They
shouldn’t have been there to begin with.

“Your
Majesty,” she panted, trying to catch her breath, “I’m glad you’re still here.
Your spy needs you. And you, Vane. Uncle Zac….”

“Already?”
asked the king. Amazing what twenty-four hours had done to his appearance. When
Kansten first met him, he had looked younger than his fifty years despite his
thinned blond hair. Now his bright eyes had dulled and sunken. His complexion
looked less healthy, and more lines and hollows grooved his face.

The
thin, straw-haired woman said, “I’ll be off to Carphead to find those books,
no?”

The
king sanctioned her exit, and she transported away. The three men Kansten had
named headed for the door, where Vane, with August in tow, turned to say,
“Thad? Come on.”

Thad
Greller fell into step, as did Walten and Wilhem, which made Zacry narrow the
blue-gray eyes set in his strong-featured face. “Where do you two think you’re
going?”

Wilhem
answered, “With you.”

“I’m
afraid not. You’ll wait here.”

Walten’s
mouth fell open. “Uncle Zac!”

“Wait,”
ordered Kora’s brother. Wilhem threw himself in an armchair with a huff.
Kansten would have smiled, but she was too winded. No time to catch her breath;
she was rushing back to the room where her mother waited, basking in her
brothers’ exclusion from Kora’s report, until Kora herself commanded, “Thank
you, Kansten. You can go now.”

Kansten
crossed her arms. “Mother, I….”

“You
can join your brothers in the parlor.”

“This
isn’t right, you know.”

Kora
said, “I don’t care what you deem it. You’re my daughter, and I won’t have you
listening to this.”

“Very
well,” Kansten consented. She had no choice but to leave with what dignity she
could, as a way to distinguish herself from her brothers. She made sure to shut
the door gently and headed back toward the parlor at a comfortable gait. Eavesdropping
would be pointless; one of the sorcerers in the room was bound to cast a sound
barrier.

Kora’s
head felt light, and not in the pleasant way it sometimes spun when she spent
too long on her toes to gain the height she needed to kiss her husband. She
sank to a seat on the bed while her allies stood around her, and she said,
“It’s not Partsvale.”

Zacry
said, “What do you mean?”

“Linstrom’s
target. It’s not Partsvale. Partsvale’s a decoy, in case Rexson should try
exactly what he’s done, should infiltrate the plot. The assault will be in
Yangerton. The Central Plaza, they’ll raze it to the ground. Linstrom and a
crony, some man named Terrance….”

August
tightened her grip on Vane’s arm as he said, “I know the scoundrel.”

“They’ve
been planning the real assault unknown to everyone else. They’ll reveal it an
hour before the scheduled attack on Partsvale. It’s too risky for them to leak
the change of plans sooner. With two hundred people involved, the chances the
army wouldn’t hear….”

Thad
Greller stroked his chin. “It’s brilliant,” said the nobleman. “You have to
admit, the man’s bloody brilliant.”

Zacry
told Vane, “I thought you said the man’s a lunatic?”

Vane
had turned pale. “He’s a genius as well. The two can go hand in hand. Hang it
all!”

With
that, Kora stood. She would have liked to throw Rexson’s wish to send her back
to Traigland in his face, but she lacked the heart. He looked too exhausted.
Instead she told Vane, “You’re not to turn invisible and spy on Linstrom, you
understand? He and Terrance, they have spells to check for intruders. They
would find you.”

August
clapped a hand over her mouth. Vane moved his arm to her waist, to reassure
her, and told the sorceress, “That’s good to know. I won’t stalk him, Kora. You
can do that safely.”

With
a curt nod, and a glare at the king she couldn’t manage to soften, though she
tried, Kora said, “I know I can.”

While
Zacry stood in silent contemplation—that was the only situation in which
he could be silent—Thad Greller’s admiration of Linstrom’s intellect and
daring turned to visible dread. He stammered, “The Central Plaza? Yangerton?
The most populous city in your realm? Your Majesty, this is…. This is so much
worse than we imagined. What’s to be done?”

Rexson
set his jaw. “Stop Linstrom ahead of time, and Terrance. Kill them at their
shop, assault them and their sorcerers at the Hall…. Anything. Any of that’s preferable
to them laying waste to Yangerton. The number of people in Yangerton, the
children who frequent…. We cannot have Linstrom pillaging that plaza. Kora, are
you certain no one else knows his true intentions? No one but Terrance?”

“Fairly
certain. It’s possible his lover…. I’ll have to track him more. If there
is
someone else, I’ll find out.”

The
king nodded. “Vane, I need you back in Partsvale. Speak to your fellow spy,
that baker. Find out if he’d any inkling of this.”

Vane
said, “I don’t imagine he had, or he’d have spoken, but I’ll see what his
reaction is. What he suggests. He’s known Linstrom far longer than I.” The
sorcerer cast an energy spell, in preparation to transport, but before he left
the king asked him:

“Francie?
How is she? The queen specifically asked….”

“She’s
alive, and with that stone in her shoe she’ll stay that way. I can’t say more
than that. She’s too weak to be moved, and traumatized, right terrified she’s
with child. She very well might be. There’s nothing to do but wait. Either way,
I imagine she’ll resign from the council, Rexson.”

Rexson
nodded his dismissal of the duke. August hugged her husband, and Vane kissed
her forehead before transporting away with a mutter.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

Kora’s Children

Kansten’s
brothers sent her a sympathetic smile when she joined them in the parlor. She
asked about Jane Trand, and they told her she’d gone back to her office at
Vane’s school, to fetch some spellbooks for them to study, so they could be
better prepared for any battle.

“Uncle
Zac sent you away too?” asked Walten. “Infuriating, isn’t it?”

Her
knees wobbly, Kansten took a seat on the floor, against the wall. Her brothers
joined her, looking concerned, and while Wilhem tapped his foot on the rug she
whispered, “I wonder what Mom’s telling them, that she’d send me away like
that. I’m frightened, getting more and more frightened each minute. I’ve never
seen Mother’s face look the way it did when she sent me for the king.”

Wilhem
reminded her, “You did ask for the job.”

“Of
course I did. Magic or no magic, I’ll make myself useful. I won’t sit here
twiddling my thumbs.”

Walten
told her, “You’re not useless, Kansten. You’re not some kind of failure because
you can’t do magic. No one thinks you’re weak, you just….”

His
sister shoved him. “You do! Both of you! You think I’m too blasted weak to
stand the sight of your cursed sorcery. Well, you can work magic around me. I
don’t need you to protect me from my defect. What do you think I’ll do if I see
you cast a spell, start crying? Throw things at you?”

Walten
stroked his thin beard, looking embarrassed. Still tapping his foot,
smooth-faced Wilhem tried to talk, but the sounds he made weren’t quite words.
Kansten shot, “I’m as much Mom’s child as either one of you. I’m just as proud
to be her child as you are, and I’m older than you both. Sure, I’m jealous of
your magic. Sure, I wish I was a sorceress. That doesn’t mean I resent you, all
right? It’s not your fault I’m a bloody disappointment. I don’t grudge that you
have magic, but if you keep walking on eggshells around me like you think I’ll
crack if I hear you mention a spell, I’ll resent you all right. I’ll grow to
hate you. Stop treating me like a baby!”

Walten
rose to his own defense. “I had no idea you felt that way.”

“Well,
I do.”

Kansten’s
eyes had begun to leak. Some clean napkins from Kansten’s lunch with Thad were
still stacked on a table halfway across the room, and Walten used a movement
spell,
Mudar
, to make one fly through
the air into his sister’s hand. She smiled as she wiped her face. He said,
“You’re not a disappointment to anyone, Kans. How could you think that?”

“I’ve
always thought that,” she admitted. “I’ve always felt my lack of magic made
everyone uncomfortable around me. Unsure how to relate to me. I thought my
presence annoyed everyone, for just that reason.”

Wilhem,
who had moved on from foot-tapping to picking at the seams of his tunic, looked
up to protest, “Kansten, that’s ridiculous. You think you’re an annoyance? Who trained
with me for that long run I wanted to do last year, when I needed motivation?”

“I
did,” said Kansten.

“Who
helped me stand up to that idiot kid who was picking on me at school, back when
I was ten and too scared to talk to Dad?”

“I
did that too.”

“Who
went exploring with me all the time in the woods behind Uncle Zac’s? Showed me
how to climb the trees there and launch just right to be able to jump the
creek?”

“All
me.”

“You
think those were annoyances? Kansten, I’ve learned tons from you. I’ll never
forget those things you did for me.”

Wilhem’s
sister punched him lightly, affectionately, in the shoulder. Walten, always
more uncomfortable with expressing emotion than his brother, cast another
spell, this one to light a lantern on the wall that had gone out. “In all
honesty,” he said, “it’s lucky for me you can’t do magic. If you could, there
wouldn’t be a spell you wanted to learn you wouldn’t master. You’d be a far
superior sorcerer than me, which means I wouldn’t dare do something like this.”

The
tear-stained cotton napkin Kansten had laid aside flew up with a word from
Walten to smack her in the face. She pulled it away with a grin, and gave
Walten a shove that knocked him sideways. When he pushed himself back to a
sitting position, Kansten’s thoughts sobered to watch him, and she said, “I
want you both to promise you’ll look out for the other. I know you two. You’ll
take better care of a brother than you’ll guard yourself. I know you won’t go
home, not before this is over, and I know you’ve studied enough magic to
protect each other, even if I’ve never really seen you cast. Promise me.”

“We
promise,” the boys said in unison.

“Bet
your bottoms you do.”

Walten,
who apparently wanted to speak of something else, asked his sister, “What have
you been up to since you got here?”

“Went
to the Palace,” she said. “You remember those kids years ago who came from
Herezoth to stay with us a while?” They did. “They were the king’s children.”

Wilhem
said, his voice soft, “I guess that makes sense, come to think of it.”

Walten
asked, “You met them again, I guess?”

“Yeah,”
said Kansten. “They’re pretty much prigs. Guess that makes sense too.” She
tried, and failed, to prevent the corner of her lip turning up in an ironic
smirk. Almost immediately, she brought her expression back to neutrality, but
she wasn’t quick enough.

Walten’s
eyes grew wide. “Prigs, huh? All of them? You sure about that?”

Kansten
sighed in frustration, cursing herself. “Give me a break, Walt. They’re
princes.”

“Which
isn’t a prig?” Walten pressed. “I don’t imagine it’s the oldest.”

“The
youngest one’s almost normal. He’s fond of his beagle, lets it follow him
around. I halfway forgot who I was talking to.”

Wilhem
paled. He shifted his weight to his other arm. “You didn’t swear in front of
him?”

“Him
and his dog. Who cares? I wasn’t trying to impress him. He’s a bloody prince.”

Walten
rolled his eyes. “Our sister the eloquent. You swore in front of royalty?”

“And
I’m oddly proud of it, after the fact. Was mortified the moment it happened….
Don’t tell Mom,” Kansten begged.

“We
won’t,” Wilhem assured her. “She’d tan your hide.”

Kansten
grinned at her brothers. “She’d make a rug of me.” Then her elation faded. “I’m
glad we had this talk,” she said. “You know you two drive me batty, ‘cause I’ve
never been shy about that. What I don’t say enough is I honestly don’t know
what I’d do, if you weren’t around to annoy me.”

It’s not their fault I
don’t have magic. That I don’t fit in anywhere. I thought I’d belong here, in
Herezoth. I thought…. It’s not their fault. I shouldn’t act as though it is.
That’s not fair to them, and they’re nervous right now.

The
boys would never say so, but they were terrified at the thought of a magic
battle. Kansten saw fear in the way Walt clenched his bristly jaw, in the way
Wil could not stop fidgeting. He’d been restless since he sat down. While
Walten tensed even more, Wilhem said, “You know we love you, Kans.”

“If
you love me, you’ll go home.”

Walten
said, “We love you tons, we do, but fat chance.”

Kansten
sighed. “I knew that wouldn’t work.” She began to say more, but stopped short
and scrambled to her feet as the door turned nearby. Her brothers stood as
well, and Hune Phinnean entered, his brown hair windswept and tied as when
Kansten first had met him. He wore riding gear of a quality Kansten had never
seen, with a leather jerkin and boots so immaculate they shone in the
lamplight. Her immediate thought was that the garb of an equestrian suited his
slight build far better than a servant’s uniform had. It lent him bulk. Authority.

“Kansten,”
he said, and his blue eyes seemed to darken with unease. Or did the rest of his
face grow pale? All she noticed was his eyes. “I was looking for August. Didn’t
want her to think I’d forgotten her. I know she’s distraught, and I hardly spoke
a word to her yesterday.”

“What
is it with you nobles all wanting to coddle her? She’s a person, not porcelain.
She won’t break.” Hune sent her a quizzical look, and she explained, “Some man
named Thad beat you here by a good seven hours. I assume you know him.”

Her
cheeks grew hot when she realized she had chastened Hune, and in front of Walt
and Wilhem, but the prince’s response was to smile out of gratitude for what he
deemed good news. “Thad Greller’s seen her? Good. I’d have come here earlier,
but I promised my brother I’d attend a conference he had to run with the
Traiglanders.”

“These
are my brothers,” said Kansten. Walt and Wilhem stood looking so awkward that
Kansten almost laughed. They didn’t know what to do, whether to bow, or nod, or
extend a hand perhaps. She could almost see their frantic brains at work,
trying to decide. “My sorcerer brothers. They’re here to….”

“Help
Vane,” Hune deduced. He grabbed Kansten’s shoulder with a jerk. “Are you all
right?”

Kansten
waved a dismissive hand, horribly convinced she wouldn’t fool the royal in the
slightest. “I’m no more made of porcelain than your Duchess of Ingleton.”

The
prince put Kansten’s brothers out of their misery by extending a hand to each
in turn. “Thank you,” he said. “My family thanks you both, sincerely.”

Hoping
Hune might not see, Kansten sent her brothers a glare that ordered them from
the room. They were only too happy to oblige her. Alone with the prince,
Kansten admitted as they took proper seats near the unlit hearth, “I always
thought them self-centered, those two. And a bit lazy, but I judged them wrong.
I’ve judged everything wrong up to now.”

She
dared not mention her old dreams of Herezoth, not before the kingdom’s prince,
but Hune, somehow, read her disillusion in her face. He told her, “You only
just got here.”

“To
apprentice as an architect. With Cline Dagner.”

Hune
looked impressed, but made no comment about her teacher’s prestige. “Give
Podrar a chance,” he said. “If you don’t like the capital, try Yangerton, or a
village somewhere. I know Herezoth has problems, but this place is much more
than its tensions. It’s people like Thad Greller, with his gift for diffusing
that tension with wit. It’s a history of stunning achievements: architectural,
military, magical. Kansten, no place that creates men like Vane or my father
can be all bad.”

“I
suppose not,” said Kansten.

Hune
sighed. “I’m sorry you had to come in the midst of all of this.”

“I
should have expected it, is the thing. I can’t help feeling I should have. My
apprenticeship starts next week, so I thought to spend this one seeing the
sites. The Great Square, the Temple….”

Hune
smiled. “Whoever named the Great Square was a dolt. I have to admit, though,
the Great Rectangle hasn’t quite the same ring.”

Kansten
asked, “Do you ever wish you could leave Herezoth?” When Hune did not respond,
she said, “That’s far too personal a question, I’m sorry. I….”

“I’ve
never wanted to leave Herezoth,” he told her. “Podrar, on occasion. The Palace,
almost daily: I trust you’ll keep that assertion between us. But not Herezoth.
This place grips a person, Kansten. I’ve heard that said, and as strange as it
sounds, there’s a measure of truth in the statement. There’s something in the
air, or the soil, and once Herezoth has a hold on you, that’s it. Your heart
never leaves. You can get on a boat, sure. You can pass your years elsewhere,
but that elsewhere is never home. You should hear the way our Traiglander
guests speak of immigrants from Herezoth. The expatriates are dull-eyed, they
say. Always dull-eyed. Traiglanders are amazed to come here and find the
kingdom full of life, its people hearty.”

“Traiglanders
are far too senseless to understand how dull their lives are, that’s all that
means,” Kansten offered. Hune’s lip twitched as he fought a smirk.

“Not
shy to offer your opinions, are you?”

“You
feel the same about Traigland,” said Kansten. “You won’t say so. You can’t, not
being the king’s son, but I’d wager you feel the same.”

“Herezoth
grips a person,” Hune insisted, dodging her accusation. “If you give it time,
it’ll sink its claws in you. Your blood’s all Herezoth, no? How content are
your parents, your uncle, in Traigland? I’m sure their lives are comfortable,
but don’t they long for something else? Some
where
else?”

Kansten’s
mother, without a doubt. She had raised her children with legends and folk
tales from Herezoth, with stories from her own childhood here, and her voice
sounded different when she wove those tales than at other times. As for Parker,
Kansten’s father, he would complain about the salt air when he took his
daughter fishing. He was from Yangerton, far from Herezoth’s coast, and had
fished on the Podra River some two days south of the capital. In contrast to
his wife, he rarely mentioned his homeland directly; silence made his
self-imposed exile easier to bear.